ATHENS (AFP) -- The Greek foreign ministry renewed an invitation to Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to visit Athens on December 7-8 as planned, a day after saying that the visit was to be postponed.

The reason given for the postponement was that Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis would have been away from Athens on the scheduled dates, attending an extraordinary UN Security Council Mideast meeting in New York.

But the UN has now postponed that meeting to December 12, meaning that Gul's visit to Athens can now go ahead as planned, the ministry said in a statement.

If Turkey agrees to the December 7-8 dates, Gul's visit will take place before an EU foreign ministers' meeting on December 11 due to decide whether to suspend accession talks with Ankara over its refusal to open its ports to Cypriot ships.

The European Commission on Wednesday recommended a partial freezing of the negotiations, urging that eight of the 35 policy chapters which all candidate nations must complete remain closed.

Greece has echoed the EU line on membership requirements for Turkey, which include the country opening its ports and airports to Cyprus.

"We continue to support Turkey's European perspective, on condition that it fulfils its obligations," Greek PM Costas Karamanlis said on Wednesday on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Riga, Latvia.

After decades of rivalry, Athens and Ankara have improved their relations since 1999 but remain at odds over questions of sovereignty in the Aegean Sea, and over the status of Cyprus.

Nonetheless, Gul and his Greek counterpart Dora Bakoyannis meet frequently, and adopted new military "confidence measures" in June.